#the aesthetic never really appealed to me and the lack of diversity has always been a huge turn off

[freaky-flawless]

Youtube Shorts keep showing me EAH clips, and I'm trying so hard to resist, cuz it'll be a slippery ass slope if it manages to capture my interest.

[mulanxiaojie]

“Mulan” inadvertently reveals why it’s so difficult to create multicultural content with global appeal in 2020. It highlights the vast disconnect between Asian Americans in Hollywood and Chinese nationals in China, as well as the extent to which Hollywood fails to acknowledge the difference between their aesthetics, tastes and politics. It also underscores the limits of the American conversation on representation in a global world.

In conversations with several Asian-American creatives, Variety found that many feel caught between fighting against underrepresentation in Hollywood and being accidentally complicit in China’s authoritarian politics, with no easy answers for how to deal with the moral questions “Mulan” poses.

“When do we care about representation versus fundamental civil rights? This is not a simple question,” says Bing Chen, co-founder of Gold House, a collective that mobilizes the Asian American community to help diverse films, including “Mulan,” achieve opening weekend box office success via its #GoldOpen movement. “An impossible duality faces us. We absolutely acknowledge the terrible and unacceptable nature of what’s going on over there [in China] politically, but we also understand what’s at stake on the industry side.”

The film leaves the Asian American community at “the intersection of choosing between surface-level representation — faces that look like ours — versus values and other cultural nuances that don’t reflect ours,” says Lulu Wang, director of “The Farewell.”

In a business in which past box office success determines what future projects are bankrolled, those with their eyes squarely on the prize of increasing opportunities for Asian Americans say they feel a responsibility to support “Mulan” no matter what. That support is often very personal amid the industry’s close-knit community of Asian Americans, where people don’t want to tear down the hard work of peers and friends.

“‘Mulan’ is actually the first film where the Asian American community is really split,” says sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, who examines racism in Hollywood. “For people who are more global and consume more global news, maybe they’re thinking, ‘We shouldn’t sell our soul in order to get affirmation from Hollywood.’ But we have this scarcity mentality.

“I felt like I couldn’t completely lambast ‘Mulan’ because I personally felt solidarity with the Asian American actors,” Yuen continues. “I wanted to see them do well. But at what cost?”

This scarcity mentality is particularly acute for Asian American actors, who find roles few and far between. Lulu Wang notes that many “have built their career on a film like ‘Mulan’ and other crossovers, because they might not speak the native language — Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Hindi — to actually do a role overseas, but there’s no role being written for them in America.”

Certainly, the actors in “Mulan,” who have seen major career breakthroughs tainted by the film’s political backlash, feel this acutely. “You have to understand the tough position that we are in here as the cast, and that Disney is in too,” says actor Chen Tang, who plays Mulan’s army buddy Yao.

There’s not much he can do except keep trying to nail the roles he lands in hopes of paving the way for others. “The more I can do great work, the more likely there’s going to be somebody like me [for kids to look at and say], ‘Maybe someday that could be me.’”

Part of the problem is that what’s happening in China feels very distant to Americans. “The Chinese-speaking market is impenetrable to people in the West; they don’t know what’s going on or what those people are saying,” says Daniel York Loh of British East Asians and South East Asians in Theatre and Screen (BEATS), a U.K. nonprofit seeking greater on-screen Asian representation.

Some of the disconnect is understandable: With information overload at home, it’s hard to muster the energy to care about faraway problems. But part of it is a broader failure to grasp the real lack of overlap between issues that matter to the mainland’s majority Han Chinese versus minority Chinese Americans. They may look similar, but they have been shaped in diametrically different political and social contexts.

“China’s nationalist pride is very different from the Asian American pride, which is one of overcoming racism and inequality. It’s hard for Chinese to relate to that,” Yuen says.

Beijing-born Wang points out she often has more in common with first-generation Muslim Americans, Jamaican Americans or other immigrants than with Chinese nationals who’ve always lived in China and never left.

If the “Mulan” debacle has taught us anything, in a world where we’re still too quick to equate “American” with “white,” it’s that “we definitely have to separate out the Asian American perspective from the Asian one,” says Wang. “We have to separate race, nationality and culture. We have to talk about these things separately. True representation is about capturing specificities.”

She ran up against the industry’s inability to make these distinctions while creating “The Farewell.” Americans felt it was a Chinese film because of its subtitles, Chinese cast and location, while Chinese producers considered it an American film because it wasn’t fully Chinese. The endeavor to simply tell a personal family story became a “political fight to claim a space that doesn’t yet exist.”

In the search for authentic storytelling, “the key is to lean into the in-betweenness,” she said. “More and more, people won’t fit into these neat boxes, so in-betweenness is exactly what we need.”

However, it may prove harder for Chinese Americans to carve out a space for their “in-betweenness” than for other minority groups, given China’s growing economic clout.

Notes author and writer-producer Charles Yu, whose latest novel about Asian representation in Hollywood, “Interior Chinatown,” is a National Book Award finalist, “As Asian Americans continue on what I feel is a little bit of an island over here, the world is changing over in Asia; in some ways the center of gravity is shifting over there and away from here, economically and culturally.”

With the Chinese film market set to surpass the US as the world’s largest this year, the question thus arises: “Will the cumulative impact of Asian American audiences be such a small drop in the bucket compared to the China market that it’ll just be overwhelmed, in terms of what gets made or financed?”

As with “Mulan,” more parochial, American conversations on race will inevitably run up against other global issues as U.S. studios continue to target China. Some say Asian American creators should be prepared to meet the challenge by broadening their outlook.

“Most people in this industry think, ‘I’d love for there to be Hollywood-China co-productions if it meant a job for me. I believe in free speech, and censorship is terrible, but it’s not my battle. I just want to get my pilot sold,’” says actor-producer Brian Yang (“Hawaii Five-0,” “Linsanity”), who’s worked for more than a decade between the two countries. “But the world’s getting smaller. Streamers make shows for the world now. For anyone that works in this business, it would behoove them to study and understand the challenges that are happening in and [among] other countries.”

Gold House’s Chen agrees. “We need to speak even more thoughtfully and try to understand how the world does not function as it does in our zip code,” he says. “We still have so much soft power coming from the U.S. What we say matters. This is not the problem and burden any of us as Asian Americans asked for, but this is on us, unfortunately. We just have to fight harder. And every step we take, we’re going to be right and we’re going to be wrong.”

[black-is-no-colour]

AnOther Magazine Autumn Winter 2020  Cover Story: John Galliano on Fallen Angels, Blitz Kids & Meeting Margiela

EMAIL EXCHANGE BETWEEN JOHN GALLIANO AND ANOTHER MAGAZINE, JULY 2020

AnOther Magazine: You went back to your own beginnings with this collection – your work of the 80s, your formative ideas about fashion. Why did that feel right for now?

John Galliano: Compression and suppression inspire a distinct sense of creativity, resourcefulness. During the lockdown period, something drew my mind to the way we felt during the Thatcher years, our backs up against the wall. Nothing can stand in the way of this kind of creativity.

AM: Why was your 1986 Fallen Angels collection specifically a point of inspiration – what is it about that collection that resonated?

JG: In confinement, I had come across the neoclassical wet drapery of Antonio Corradini and Raffaelle Monti – these veiled heroines in marble – which really appealed to me. I was hungry for the kind of aspirational beauty that inspires hope. In many ways, we were expressing the same sentiment in the 80s. It was a hankering for beauty, for heroism, for hedonism and hope.

AM: Fashion has changed so much since that era – in large part through work you yourself have undertaken across your career, helping to reinvent the ways we see clothes and fashion as a whole. Why does that era’s aesthetic and spirit speak to you today? To hark back to another collection of yours, is it about rediscovering a forgotten innocence?

JG: Between then and now, the common denominator is resourcefulness. The motivations were different but the expressions are similar – working with what you have, you try to find hope through the beauty of escapism.

AM: The Blitz Kids were a slightly earlier reference, but also in the mix. Why is that pertinent to now? That idea of dressing up to party – a decadence, perhaps? Certainly a glamour.

JG: Zoom parties! Putting on a red lip for the screen. We may be in a time of limitation, but we still have a human need to dress up, express ourselves and have a good time. Glamour needs an audience. I’ve never referenced a period in my own life before, but the emotional state of lockdown evoked an energy I had felt before.

AM: Can you describe your feelings when you first walked into the Blitz? Do you have any anecdotes you’d be happy to share?

JG: I wasn’t queen bee at the time. I had not become the peacock people associate with John Galliano. I was still quite shy, on my foundation year at Saint Martin’s. But, working Saturdays at [the boutique] PX, I had met a girl named Maria. Her background was Spanish, we hit it off and she got me into the Blitz club, along with Princess Julia, who worked down the road. I was a bit in awe of these characters. Of course, I wasn’t ruling like the Stephen Linards and the Stephen Joneses – I couldn’t even afford to go every week – but I did serve some looks.

AM: Stephen Jones once said that people were embarrassed to be seen in designer clothes – apart from Westwood, actually – at Blitz, that people made their own clothes. Was that something you also remember and experienced? Why was that?

JG: I think it was in the spirit of the time. We didn’t have the resources. I remember I had a brown workwear suit, a two-piece, with asymmetric fastening and little gold studs on it. It had a blue contrast collar with an embroidered yellow oak leaf. And I probably wore some kind of pointed pixie boot. Charles, the manager of Mrs Howie [a groundbreaking boutique in London, opened in 1976 by future fashion PR Lynne Franks and her then-husband, Paul Howie], would sometimes let me wear a hand-knitted jumper that had the letter S, for Super, on it. In the Blitz, people would dress up as historical eccentrics. Resourcefulness became our gateway to self-expression.

AM: You talked about the theatrical costumier Charles Fox in the film you produced to show the Artisanal collection. Can you elaborate on that – what happened and what it meant to you? Many of the references – the military, the men’s formalwear – are still with you today, as is, undoubtedly, that spirit of reinvention and transformation.

JG: When Charles Fox closed down, all these amazing characters and Saint Martin’s students flocked there to buy it all up. Today, you might call it upcycling, but back then it was what they could get their hands on. If you have a love of theatre and history, reinvigorating the old is a reinvigorating process in itself. Creation is the very act of giving life to something.

AM: It’s interesting that you chose to reveal your creative process so openly in the film, from research, to narrative, to referencing, cutting and making and styling. That feels quite precious – a lot of designers keep it to themselves. Why did you decide to share that? Why is it right for now?

JG: The anxiety we all experienced during the lockdown period created a need for transparency. I felt a desire to be clear about what we stand for at Maison Margiela – our core beliefs in diversity, inclusion and self-expression – which all begins with the process work. By recording and showing our research practice, our genderless fittings and how we express ourselves through charity finds and upcycling, we reinforce those values in a way that might appeal to Gens Y and Z. It is my hope that when our clients eventually meander into a Maison Margiela store and see the results of that process, those values will resonate. Perhaps this format can be a blueprint for a new way of proposing our ideas and ethics.

AM: Your clothes always tell a story – often many stories interwoven. You find these extraordinary narrative references and they feed your creativity. Does fashion need to tell a story – does a narrative add to fashion, for the wearer – or is that your process, just for you as a creator?

JG: The narrative informs my research and the process work and the way I communicate with my team through that process. But in the end I often keep it to myself. During the creative process, however, it feeds into the values that are transmitted through our work and which create a connection with our clients.

AM: What was it like designing a collection during lockdown? What were the good things, what were the bad things? How did the process change? And do you feel it has changed your creativity – your viewpoint on the world?

JG: In the beginning, it filled me with anxiety – and like everyone, of course, we had to deal with practical challenges. To me, it became a matter of turning those challenges into a sense of resourcefulness. I applied some of the things I’ve been fortunate to have been taught in the past. It’s like a mourning period – once you accept reality, you are able to embrace the unknown. And so it became a driving force – the feeling that nothing would stand in the way of creativity.

AM: Given the current situation, people are speculating that the collective experience of the fashion show may be a thing of the past. You have staged some of the greatest fashion shows in history, redefining the medium. What is your reaction to the idea that fashion shows may be of the past? How important are shows to you, as a means of expressing your ideas?

JG: What I eventually realised during the lockdown period was that fashion as we’ve known it in the past will never be the same, at least not until a vaccine is found. For the moment, I hope the format we adapted to this season can be a new way of communicating and exploring one’s collection. I don’t really like doing those big shows any more, because so often the focus is taken off the clothes. I prefer smaller shows. For now, I’m happy treading gently in this new direction.

AM: Our fight and flight instincts have perhaps never been so acute, and both those elements are present in the collection. The confrontation of taking clothing apart at the seams and the romance and fantasy of veiling, clothes that appear drenched in water. Does that make sense to you?

JG: The idea of fight and flight is another way of expressing resourcefulness and escapism – elements that have been inseparably interlinked through history. The human desire for beauty and seduction is a powerful instinct.

AM: When it comes to difficulties, do you feel that you, as a designer, propose clothes to fight in, or clothes as a flight of fantasy, an antidote to reality? Which do you find more powerful?

JG: I have spoken before about our desire to transmit Gen Z’s appetite for defiance through self-expression as a reaction to conformism and the societal preconceptions that negate our authentic selves. My proposals reflect those values. I hope our work can be tools for the expression of individuality and a message of joy and hope.

AM: In the film you showed predominantly classical female veiling. Did you look at veiled men in classical sculpture too? In some ways that has always been more scandalous, the naked Christ.

JG: Historically, the wet drapery that inspired me was often related to images of goddesses – and gods, too. During the process work, I began to express it in these celestial bodies – heroines as well as heroes – which draw the mind to many areas of mythology. You’ll recognise it in how I christened each passage in the collection, and in [model] Malick’s performance in the film.

AM: How does that religious iconography relate to your childhood?

JG: It’s a familiar element of my upbringing, because my mum brought it from Gibraltar and Spain. But this collection is reflective of so many mythologies.

AM: You are a person who has often had to deal with a lack of resources and has somehow managed to turn those limitations into a positive. The São Schlumberger collection, for example. How – and why – does limitation inspire you?

JG: Limitation creates challenges, and challenges force us to innovate. Whether inspiration is born out of necessity or out of determination – such as a desire to be sustainable – it inevitably enriches the creative process.

AM: There’s always a conversation around the relevance of haute couture – people argue that it is moribund, anachronistic, and so on. In what way do you feel you have moved the Artisanal so it works for now?

JG: I work within a creative pyramid, the pyramidion of which is haute couture. The work we do in the Artisanal atelier – the experimentation, development and technical know-how – drip-feeds into every other collection at Maison Margiela. Haute couture isn’t an expression of elitism, it’s what fuels a fashion house. It is the highest and most authentic form of dressmaking, and in an age tuned into transparency, I think the role of the dressmaker will be re-evaluated.

AM: And why genderless? That also goes back to the Blitz, perhaps?

JG: Genderless-ness is part of our genetics at Maison Margiela. It goes back to the freedom of self-expression and breaking down preordained conformist ideas of masculinity and femininity. Without these societal preconceptions we are free to express ourselves, to discover new things and evolve. The Blitz club, like certain communities today, provided an escapism from societal norms, but so many people are still having to negate their authentic selves. There’s still work to be done.

AM: There is still an amazing sense of the emotion in clothes that are hand-sewn for days, even weeks, on end, the romance of the touch of the hand. It feels very much as if you own that territory and that there are not so many people doing it like that today. Can you expand on that a little please?

JG: Over the years, I have taken on the responsibilities of a creative director, and I accept the role. But I am, at heart, a dressmaker. The creative process is the fuel of fashion. And creativity is the blood that courses through my veins and through this house.

AM: Craft is incredibly important to what you do – and always has been. It feels integral to your idea of couture. What does handicraft represent now, in a time when it is more difficult for many people to be together?

JG: Someone who watched the film told me that the connectivity between the team really shines through. That meant a lot to me, because connectivity is created by authenticity – and there’s nothing more honest than craftsmanship.

AM: There’s also the idea of construction and the extremely technical pattern cutting involved in this collection specifically. Can you talk a little more about the circular cut? About the methods you explored in these clothes, this collection?

JG: I mentioned how I was hungry for an aspirational beauty that creates the same sense of hope I remembered from the Blitz years. Back then, I had discovered the bias through a technique I had developed called circular cutting. It’s a way of structuring garments from several circular pieces – in this case, fabrics like butter muslin and thermocollant – which diffuse the draping and can evoke that wet, chiselled effect. The tailored pieces are examples of Recicla – humble charity-shop finds that I reinvigorated with heroic cutting – rooted in décortiqué, inspired by the hedonism of the dance L’Apache, which conjured these armour-like silhouettes. That process reminded me of the resourcefulness of the Blitz era.

AM: You talk about the idea of a community, the Margiela pluralism of ‘we’. Do you think that is a more humane position than, for want of a better way of putting it, the concept of the designer superstar? You have experienced both – in a sense, you have epitomised both.

JG: It is my hope that the film reflects the sense of community and connectivity that exists within the pyramidical structure of our fashion house.

AM: You have always had your own community. You can really see that in the film. These are all people who have been with you for a long time, some even from the start. They seem like kindred spirits – is that important? Finding people you can communicate with instinctively, maybe even without words?

JG: Community is about sharing and connecting, becoming part of a unity and relating to one another through emotions rooted in mutual memories. As you see in the film, we share all these things and use that connectivity in the creative process.

AM: In general, what is the importance of teamwork – of community – in fashion? Does it feel more important than ever now, following the assault on our personal freedom and contact with other human beings that the pandemic has brought?

JG: The lockdown period demonstrated the human need for connection. Immediately, we all took to Zoom and other channels to invoke a sense of connectivity. Fashion has the power to express codes of belonging. Through the values we have reinforced this season, I hope we are able to communicate the ethics of our community – the values of Maison Margiela.

AM: I think perhaps people don’t always realise the many connections between yourself and Martin Margiela – the importance of white and clothing stripped back to the toile, the interest in 18th-century cut, the deconstructing and reconstructing of traditional garments and the value of a sense of the passing of time, of age. How do you feel your two aesthetics relate to one another?

JG: When I met with Martin shortly before I joined the house, as a couturier I was particularly interested in his adaptation of the codes of haute couture – the idea of the maison, the white coats, the genetics, and so on. As we continue to establish a new set of codes at Maison Margiela, I hope those parallels feel inherent.

AM: You have launched a Recicla collection as part of the ready-to-wear and the Artisanal, where you source vintage items and rework them. That, again, references the Maison Margiela Replica heritage, but it is also a gesture towards sustainability. It’s an overused word but why is it important and can fashion ever really be sustainable?

JG: Upcycling, the raison d’être of Recicla, is a self-evident proposal for sustainability, but one that invigorates the creative process at the same time. Recicla started its life in the Artisanal atelier but is now being embraced by our commercial teams and actively going into stores, and I’m so happy to witness this development. Step by step, we can all play our part in being resourceful and reducing waste.

AM: You are among the most-referenced designers in student and emerging designers’ work. Does that make you happy, even proud? It’s not easy for you to answer, maybe, but why do you think it is?

JG: If I can deliver some of the hope, aspiration and passion that I remember from my own time in college, it’s a joy. Every year, when our new lot of stages arrive from the colleges, I do a dinner for them and get out my finest china and crystal. Sometimes it’s a drag ball or a karaoke. We have fun. When they come here they’re no different from how I was. Their experiences today are different because of the internet, but they’re creative souls like we were.

AM: There’s that old cliché of money being no object. In many ways, the most brilliant fashion proves and disproves that. How would you look at that sentiment, given the value of experience/hindsight?

JG: Financial resources make a difference to the way in which ideas can be executed and communicated. But some of the finest ideas are born out of a lack of resources. Drive can be fuelled by desire, but also by necessity.

AM: What would you say to a student starting out? I feel that your words would be very important to them, given the challenges facing any young designer, but perhaps more than ever now.

JG: Believe in yourself. Believe in your dream. Be passionate. You can be whatever you want to be. Don’t listen to anybody who says you can’t. Work hard and never give up.

AM: What are your hopes and dreams for fashion as we emerge from this crisis? And what are your hopes and dreams for the world?

JG: Now, more than ever, we need to respect fashion as a platform for communicating our values and ethics. As we emerge from this crisis, it is our responsibility to stand up for what we believe in – inclusivity, diversity, nonconformity, self-expression. We have to use the voice of fashion for positive change.

The full article is here: AnOther Magazine

[squadron-leader-farrier]

Let's spice things up a bit; ANSWER ALL OF THE QUESTIONS

oh baby, you answered m prayers lol this is gonna be long so buckle up ?

1. favourite place in your country? my hill station, because of the weather, and because i haven’t been to many places, and the ones that i have been to were extremely hot and i never want to go there again,

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad? depends on the holidays tbh. what the festivals the holidays fall near and that. i’d stay here for some, but for the ones that we don’t celebrate in my country like Halloween, i’d like to go abroad.

3. does your country have access to sea? peninsula, babey!

4. favourite dish specific for your country? chicken biryani. boy, oh boy, just thinking about it makes my mouth water. it’s that good. gosh, the flavour, the spice. the way they cook it,,,, the colours ahhhh

5. favourite song in your native language? ones made before the 60s. and the patriotic songs. there are too many to name, but two (non patriotic) ones are this and this (because they’re sad love songs and give me flyboys feels ya kno?)

6. most hated song in your native language? like, as a nation? idk. but personally, i hate, absolutely loathe any songs made after the 60s. they lack originality and creativity. all they did was rip off popular english songs, and changed the lyrics. that’s literally all they did. and they are super proud of it. i hate it. the music industry had gone to complete shit. even today they don’t know what good music is and ow to make it. they’re remixing all the old ones because they lack creativity. i hate it. 

7. three words from your native language that you like the most? i don’t like any three words, because they’re not that appealing on their own (not the ones i can think of right at this moment) but rather, phrases. when you string those words and make poetry or prose. it’s really beautiful, and really poetic. perhaps the best ones are in those two songs, and others like them.

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom? i haven’t been in a situation like that so i can’t say.

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best? probably Russia because the ones right next to me are exactly the same in topographical, cultural and architectural respects. there’s literally nothing new to see there, so i’d like to go to Russia.

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language? so it’s basically three: bhenchod/madarchod/chutiya. all of them mean motherfucker in their basic essence, but are used to describe people, cuss out people, call your pal, so basically, the hindi equivalent of fuck. can be used as adjectives, prepositions, verbs, nouns, whatnot. can be used individually or all together. perhaps splash one of them in a conversation to make the group giggle a bit more while telling a funny story. 

11. favourite native writer/poet? the ones who wrote nationalistic literature during the freedom struggle. so, to say, i like Sarojni Naidu, and Tagore. they’re perhaps the most famous ones of the time, and i like their work. 

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem? i don’t have any, because they’re already written in english by the authors. i read a poem or two lying around somewhere, but the thing about hindi is that the translations don’t bear the same feelings as the originals. 

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?  oh there are too many. too many by far. most of them are the usual black cat and others, oh, one i heard when i was in like 4th grade was that you shouldn’t go out with open wet hair at night because a spirit can get caught in em and come home with you. so that was strange. my family doesn’t have any, we’re rather realistic.

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV? no not in the least. you know why? because of this. i swear to fuck, the person who uploaded this compilation didn’t edit a single thing in. how do i know? because i’ve watched these on actual television. when i was young. in my neighbour’s tv. 

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get? remember when some of you motherfuckers got offended by bitch lasagna because you lack basic understanding what a fucking joke is? you don’t know what satire is? you are the reason why people think indians have no sense of humour because you DON’T it was a fucking JOKE holy shit i’m so triggered by this

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with? haven’t heard of many stereotypes about us, but the laziest one i can think of is that we can do math and are good at science. we’re not. i’m shit at all of that. so are my 34 other classmates. 

17. are you interested in your country’s history?  not really, tbh. maybe the period just before independence, and some post-independence stuff, because i got dirt on those politicians and i want more of that so that i have a reasonable justification for hating politicians.

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language? i don’t know, maybe i’m so used to it i don’t even realise lol. but i guess so.

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem? YES. YES. YES. i love them. i absolutely adore them. the flag is so symbolic and so beautiful i love her (orange on top for sacrifice, white in the middle for purity, green at the bottom for prosperity, the blue circle in the middle for resolution and justice, just ahhhh). the national anthem always gives me the chills. everytime i hear it playing somewhere, or when we sing it sometimes after assembly, or during days like today (independence day) or republic day, when we finish singing the last line it just always makes me a bit emotional and proud? yeah. today i almost started crying because i love it so much.

20. which sport is The Sport in your country? Cricket. even though the national sport is hockey. no one cares about hockey :(

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?  the memers who think they’re very funny, (which they are not in the least), and the anti nationalists and separatists. i do not want them here. get lost. fuck off. shooo.

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed? what makes me proud, is the freedom struggle of the revolutionaries, and the progress we’re making in every field, the hospitality of the people, and the unity in diversity. what makes me ashamed is that there’s still so much corruption in the government, can’t help it, the law’s delay, gosh the people who think they’’re better than everybody else, the entertainment industry, the music industry, some of the people, most of the politicians, etc.

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country? bold of you to assume we have a single favourite beverage for the entire country. i think it varies from state to state. for mine i think it may be something apple related, because we have lots of apples here. the season is also coming lol and also, it’s very confusing because some states have completely banned alcohol and in some the legal drinking age is 18. 

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country? canada and ‘murica mostly because so many people immigrate there 

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country? i’d like to be British, because  i like the aesthetic and weather. 

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal? i don’t watch many movies, but i think it’s not much/a small amount and neither do i mind nor do i care. 

27. favourite national celebrity? no one. i hate all of them.

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites? yep!! she’s not called a subcontinent for nothing, babey! i live near the Himalayas, so i like that.

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country? oooooh yes. ooooooooooh  boy. with Pakistan lol. mainly because of the union territory of jammu and kashmir. because pakistan wants it, we want it, and it legally also belongs to us. there’s separatists there, anti nationalists, and there’s poverty there, so it’s easy to instigate the people against the government. there were wars fought for it, most of them ended in our favour, but the other side is still making so many ceasefire violations, it is insane. it has been years, and every other day there’s a new violation. there’s lots of unrest in the valley, which is a shame, because it is a truly beautiful place. 

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family? my uncle is British, my cousin’s husband is also a Brit. a great-grand relative of mine was also British. there are none on my mother’s side.

[prodigal-ezreal]

Nach Little Box of Hopes And Fears: Ezreal rework edition.

Let’s open this Pandora box, okay?

So, The Ezreal rework is probably hitting live somewhere at the end of the year after Worlds and the PBE during them, which gives us two months to sit, twiddle our thumbs and think. And Oh Boi! Have I thought! More under the cut because this Got Long.

This is all VERY subjective. Please take it with a grain of sea salt.

Let’s start from the beginning, as all organized matters should: What has Riot been doing with their reworks and Lore updates lately?

In my opinion, is give everyone and everything a place in the world, connecting characters and things that might have not been connected previously and retconning a few things along the way— With various degrees of success. The Darkin in Shurima are probably one of the biggest offenders here. While it gave them a place in Runaterra other than ‘Maybe aliens from another dimension/Old As Hell Demons’, Aatrox’s rework, Varus’s music video and Rhaast’s release never tied their designs or origins to anything Shuriman, from there the whiplash I got at least.

But that’s beside the point I’m trying to make. What’s Ezreal’s current state in the Lore?

Well, Ezreal has always been kind of in a weird spot post-institute, he’s from Piltover but has never had any strong affiliations or associations with the City State other than the place in which he spent his childhood, and now with the Piltover/Zaun and his own lore update, he has little ties in design as well! Back in the day, belts were all the rage in Piltover, now it’s more of an Art Deco thing —which I love— but Mr ‘I could probably go a week eating only the leather in my outfit’s belts and I still wouldn’t go hungry’ doesn’t fit anymore aesthetically. Shurima is still important to his character, since that’s where he got his gauntlet from, but as we can see from Elixir of Uloa, he’s not limited to exploring the desert, and to be honest? he never was.

Talking about design, it’s not that his design is horrendously bad, even if a bit ridiculous for his job (leather is not a breathable fabric), it just grew old. And it could have grown older! But the disparity between League’s current aesthetic/lore direction and Ezreal’s would have grown way too large for a champion so played. That’s why I reason they chose him, and not fiddlesticks or Udyr, for a VU/VO right now.

And here is where the box gets opened: let’s go first through the fears to have hope be sitting nice and pretty still inside at the end, okay?

I think everyone that follows me knows that, while I eat up any and all canon Ezreal content, I really don’t like the most recent approach Riot has had with his art: That Cutesy, Pixie Boy aesthetic that gets in my nerves and is present both in Star Guardian and the most recent World Championship skins. (Not to mention, they have gotten really lazy painting/modeling his face? I’d argue Ace of Spades has a prettier face than SG/SSG). Were his rework to take that direction for the sake of the good old ‘Ez is a girl’ joke, I’m going to be really sad about it. And Mad. Smad.

Not because I have a probelm with Ezreal not being your traditional hypermasculine fantasy male character, I quite enjoy that he isn’t, and if they were to tilt the scales in that direction to overfix the same joke, I’d still feel weird about it.

I think its easy to understand the fear of my favorite character being changed into the joke that has plagued him for years because of the homophobic fanbase that birthed it. My beef of course isn’t with male aligned people who don’t fit into the expectations of the gender, and it’s not my intention to imply that if you like the joke/ship, that you are contributing to your own oppression by reclaiming something they named as shameful— of course not. My beef is with the fact they claimed it shameful and that Riot is Not Woke Enough to pretend like it was their intention all along and they aren’t playing into the vices and prejuices of its fanbase. Let me explain.

Tar/ez or Eztar!c exists only because of the powerduo they used to be all the way back in Season 2, and persisted as an intracommunity joke because people just loved making fun of characters that didn’t quite fit with the usual Male Archetype(tm), Ezreal with his assumed ‘pretty boy’ looks (assumed because tbh no one was pretty back then) and lithe physique, and Taric with his ‘affeminate’ liking of gems. This joke, rooted in homophobia, turned both of their characters into jokes that Riot despite its best efforts because I mostly liked Taric’s rework, shut up, still l can’t completely overcome to this day, when the usage of ‘lol that’s so gay’ is not as negative as the beggining of the decade. It’s not like I think that it’s going to go away, I just fear it’s gonna get worse.

Not to mention! The wildly original, very alive horse that is the ‘Ez is a girl’ joke, comes from people forcing heterosexual roles into same gender relationships which, ew! That and his “Pretty anime boy” archetype, since those are also popular in yao! media (double ew). AND from the misogony that any male aligned person, or in less serious cases like this one, character, that doesn’t fall into line with the expectative of its gender, it’s marked as lesser. You might see this issues and think ‘I barely see that anymore’, which, fair. It has been in decline in the general Internet Population since the second half of the decade, but all of these problems stem from early 2010’s gamer culture so— Yeah. That’s another can of worms I am NOT opening.

TLDR: I feel like the the recent art direction comes from toxic places and I’m fearful Riot is gonna play into that instead of ignoring it.

It may be something else behind those decisions, but this is what my confirmation bias looks like.

Enough of unfounded fears I have now struck into your hearts because if I’m going to hell worrying about this, I’m gonna bring you all with me. Let’s think about hope.

My highest hopes for the update is that Riot plays into Ezreal’s lack of strong links— Not only do I think that it makes sense for a explorer to never truly belong in one place, it’s just easier and doesn’t force anything too alien to his character. I’d really like if they went for a ‘citizen of the world’ kind of deal. Make his design something based on Piltover but obviously worn and foreign, pepper his language with words from Shurima, Freljord, Ionia! Hell, with how big Noxus is, he’d have to learn to speak the language if he wanted to cross through it. I feel like he’s a wonderful opportunity to represent how diverse, yet interconnected Runnaterra is. I also feel like it plays into his fantasy of being a dashing —pun intended—young man who gets in and out of trouble, from adventure to adventure a la Indana Jones.

But going back to Riot’s Lore direction, we still need to tie him with somewhere, or at the very least, something.

Enter the world rune.

‘But Nach’ I hear you wail as I use either 50’s sellsman tactics or early 2000’s fanfic writer interrumptions to catch your attention, ‘World Runes are Ryze’s thing!’

Which, Fair. They are. I’m not saying Ezreal is gonna ‘prove himself to be able to let go of a World Rune’ since that is Ryze’s exclusive thing (even if the thought of that happening and Ez outright rejecting it cos Adventure sounds very appealing to me) I just want him to be tied to the missing World Rune because it makes sense for League’s token explorer to accidentaly stumble into the World Magic Battery.

Also because of the promo, but who knows. Maybe he wasn’t in the Ryze short precisely for that, maybe because since it had been so many years on the making, Ez wasn’t even in the Update Radar then and they just didn’t include him/made reference to him. It doesn’t matter, we don’t know. Time will tell.

Plus, him being tied to the World Rune would make Zoe’s fixation —as creepy as it is— make a bit more sense. If the Aspect Of Change that damned The Darkin is the same one we have today, It’d make her have more secretive, ulterior motives and connect her happy go lucky and childish personality to that mischeveous, manipulative persona we got to see in the Darkin story. If it turns out they are different, it still makes sense with Zoe’s Color story and IG characterization since she can’t seem to get serious about/remember what precisely she was supposed to omen.

TLDR Hopes: Just tie him to the world rune, it’d be cool. Also make him a fucking tutti fruti of cultures.

To tie it all up, I know there’s not much I can do but wait, since I am not active in the forums or the reddit community— but If I could feel in my heart Zoe was gonna have a crush on Ezreal when we got her ig teaser, then I do dare hope.

[xenosgirlvents]

Gordrakk-The Fist of Gork

Since 40k fluff just leaves me feeling utterly desolate of late, and with honestly there being nothing worth discussing concerning 40k Xenos as they more and more simply become a backdrop to die or act as support for humans, I’ve been reading more Age of Sigmar, and been delighted by how much more diversity it offers. So I want to talk a bit about the biggest Orc, er, Orruk around at current.

Gordrakk is the leader of the Ironjawz, the major Orruk faction in AoS at current who have a pretty cool look going on. I always loved Black Orcs for the most for my Orcs, and Night Goblins for my Gobbos, so Ironjawz appeal to me as they’re an extension of the Black Orc aesthetic in many ways.

Now when discussing Gordrakk there’s two things I want to look at; 1) Is he engaging as a character? 2) Is he impressive as a Character?

1) Is he engaging?

Let us begin by being fair; making an engaging Orc/Ork/Orruk character is HARD. The vast majority of Orks, for example, in 40k Novels are bland and pointless characters who are so obviously being telegraphed as ‘will die to make Space Marine look cool’ that they are hardly characters.

Writing an Ork/Orc/Orruk to be both intimidating and interesting is not easy. Look at the Beast, where GW tried to make a ‘terrifying’ and ‘intelligent’ Ork and, instead, made a generic doomsday Chaos Lord who spouted typical Chaos nonsense like ‘You are on your knees son of the Emperor’ and was stripped of absolutely any bit of charm an Ork/Orc/Orruk could have. It was awful. 

Contrast that with Ghazghkull who, although a failure at being impressive, is genuinely fun and interesting as a character. Ghazghkull combines the intimidation factor of being an unhinged maniac, with messianic tendencies and maintaining a key part of Ork charm; that blue-and-orange morality of their’s, doing things not out of hate, but because the way they see the world endless War is the one good in existence. Summed up nice in Ghazghkull’s ‘My best enemy’ speech before he spares Yarrick and sends him to Armageddon. 

So estabilishing it isn’t easy to make an Orc/Ork/Orruk interesting, how does Gordrakk fare? He’s...alright. He certainly has the seeds of a Ghazghkull type (and he is luckily more based off of him than of Grimgor) with his speech to the Stormcast’s concerning their fundamental misunderstanding of Orruks is good and has strong hints of Ghazghkull’s type of speech actually. Like Ghazghkull he suffers, though, from lacking characters to bounce off of. A sole character can only be so engaging, having a cast to engage with helps a lot and, sadly, both Ghazghkull and Gordrakk lack well-defined or fleshed out casts to have back-and-forth discussion and development with. 

2) Is he Impressive:

And here we have a resounding YES! Gordrakk is, far and away, impressive, outstripping ALL 40k Ork Characters and being comparable to some of the Badasses from Fantasy. He has kicked the ass of named Stormcast Protagonists, destroyed entire named Stormhosts, destroyed the main Chaos Stronghold on Ghyran and captured one of the 8 Realmgates leading to the All Points. All this and he’s only really appeared in like 3 Books! Compared to Ghazghkull ‘always running away and losing’ this is amazing.  

Gordrakk does so well I’m astonished that people who work on AoS work on 40k simply because of the difference in what’s allowed. In AoS Gordrakk constantly kicks major ass, whist in 40k even Ghazghkull, the no.1 Ork character, has literally never won a single campaign against any Space Marines ever, and has won a grand total of 1 battle against the Imperium as a whole.

Conclusion:

Gordrakk kicks ass...but I’d love for his Megabosses to get fleshed out a bit more, or more of a Gobbla-Skarsnik relationship with his Maw-Krusha, so that he could develop and have discourse a bit more. Still, considering how GW normally treats the Greenskinz, Gordrakk is an enormously cool character.

WAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!

[ggdeku]

Breath of the Wild final impressions

As I watched the credits roll on Breath of the Wild I was conflicted. The game had been a ton of fun, a fresh new take on the series while also being a great open-world game in its own right. But despite enjoying my time with it, I ultimately felt very dissapointed.

Breath of the Wild is not a bad game, far from it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t get what I wanted. In their quest to mix up the “Zelda formula” and bring a new structure to the series, the developers left too much behind. Resulting in a good, but ultimately unfulfilling game.

Ask any fan of the series what their favorite entry is and you’ll get a different answer every time. The draw and appeal of Zelda is so varied that fans often disagree as to what elements are most valuable to them. One of the biggest draws for me has been the design of the dungeons themselves. It’s not just about the individual puzzles in each room, but the way these puzzle rooms are connected to make the dungeon a puzzle itself. Zelda dungeons are at their best when they require the player to understand the architecture and mechanics of the space and make it fun to unravel both the individual puzzles and the overall dungeon itself.

For a deeper examination of the way Nintendo designs these structures, I highly recommend watching Mark Brown’s Boss Keys youtube series. Brown talks about each game in the series and analyzes the way dungeons are designed. This series was very influential for me and helped solidify my thoughts on this topic. I recommend the Majora’s Mask video as it perfectly explains why I love that game.

With BotW, Nintendo very clearly targeted the strengths and design values of the very first entry in the series. An open space where the player has agency to make their own decisions about where to go and what to do. With no predetermined narrative-based path, you can do what you want, when you want.  However, in achieving this goal, the pacing and tight design of the Zelda series is mostly pushed aside in favor of player freedom.

Without a strong narrative path, the developers used the shrines as an incentive for players to explore. The 120 shrines mostly use the game mechanics and player abilities very well, but were also responsible for 120 moments of stinging disappointment. Every time I finished one, I felt unsatisfied because it was just one puzzle unconnected to a greater scheme of interlocking rooms or challenges. While completing shrines I often thought about how much more I would have enjoyed the puzzle if it had been connected to the last 20 shrines I finished.

There are several combat challenge shrines, but they aren’t the most interesting or rewarding things to complete. Even the simple change of reducing the overall amount of shrines to make each one the equivalent of two puzzles and a combat room would have done wonders to the game. That change would make discovery and completion of the shrines more meaningful.

The overall quality of the shrines made the feeling even worse because with individual puzzles that strong, a solid, interconnected design would have probably lead to some of the best dungeons in the series.

The aesthetics of the shrines are all the same. The same music and visuals 120 times. I think that does a disservice to the variety of puzzles they feature, in addition to being boring after the first 20. Even simple themes like forest, ice, fire, wind, fortress, etc. would be a great way to mix up the visuals of these challenges.

Shrines at the beginning of the game look identical to shrines you will find many hours into your adventure.

And then there are the Divine Beasts. They are the closest thing this game has to a traditional Zelda dungeon, because they are much larger than shrines, feature a short series of puzzles and end with a boss.

They share very little with the established "dungeon” forumla, but one aspect they do share with their predecessors is an important one, encouraging an understanding of the structure’s architecture. Each beast requires you to understand and manipulate the movement of the structure in order to activate five switches and fight a boss.The moving and twisting beats are impressive, but the actual goals within them leave a lot to be desired.

Not only are they much shorter than the dungeons of previous Zelda games,  they all have the same objective of activating a few switches. Repeated objectives and simple physics puzzles get boring fast. After you complete one beast you have seen everything they can do.

None of the beasts provide the same feeling as a good Zelda dungeon, unraveling and fighting your way through a tightly wound knot of individual and interconnected puzzles rooms and gaining an understanding of the continuous layout of a piece of architecture. They are far too simple in their individual and overall puzzle design and feature very little combat, other than the bosses. Much like the shrines, the Divine Beasts are not bad, but they are a weak attempt at making sure something resembling a Zelda tradition remained in the game.

The beasts also have the same problem as the shrines in terms of aesthetics. They are all located in beautiful, distinct locations in the world, but the beasts themselves share the same theming (which isn’t very different from the shrines).

As someone who greatly values the traditional Zelda dungeon, this disappointment with BotW’s alternatives hit me hard. No one makes games like Zelda. No one makes Zelda-like dungeons. After waiting six years for the next 3D game in the series it sucks to be disappointed in this way.

It’s not just the dungeons, but the progression in complexity that I miss. The way the dungeon design builds from the Great Deku tree to the Spirit Temple in Ocarina of Time, or from Woodfall to Stone Tower Temple in Majora’s Mask is amazing. That hasn't been a part of Zelda in many years.

This was also one of my biggest problem with A Link Between Worlds. That game had traditional Zelda dungeons, but because the player could tackle them mostly out of order they all felt as if they were each designed to be the first dungeon. The game lost any sense of progression in complexity with dungeons that would be lucky if they lasted more than a couple minutes.

However, this game’s best moments are not the attempts to translate the dungeon format to a new structure. BotW’s strength is the open-world and sense of discovery. These were strongest for me in the first half of the game, when the majority of the world was a still a mystery.

Discovering shrines in the first half of the game was exciting, and solving the tiny Korok seed puzzles hidden throughout the world provided a unique distraction. The Korok seeds are so plentiful (900!) that you can always find enough to increase your inventory, but I felt that their implementation did more to help the developers fill up their massive world rather than create a good mechanic for the player. It’s just another meaningless collectible.

While exploration is incentivized by shrines and Korok seeds, the best discoveries were villages and towns. BotW has the best towns in any Zelda game hands down. They all have a unique atmosphere, great music, and are occupied by memorable NPCs that seem to run on a Majora’s Mask-like schedule. Discovering and entering Hateno Village at dawn was one of my all-time favorite video game moments.

Once I had explored the world, found all the villages, and unlocked each section of the map, I realized that the only thing left to find were shrines and seeds. With Korok seeds cast aside as meaningless collectibles, looking for shrines quickly stopped being interesting as I knew the only thing I could find would only instill the same sense of longing for “real dungeons” that I had experienced dozens of times before. 

Thankfully, many of the sidequests to find the shrines were some of the best moments of the game, taking the unique and interesting puzzles and bringing them onto the actual world map. But aside from those quests I did not find much fun in exploring the world. I wanted to avoid combat most of the time because I didn't want any of my weapons to break and the standard enemies often had worse gear than what I was carrying. Exploring for exploration’s sake does not interest me. I’ve never really been the kind of player that messes around in the open world games without a purpose.

The lack of enemy diversity throughout the world was very surprising. BotW has  a strangely small variety of enemies. Zelda’s famous cast of monsters is mostly absent this time around as Link is left to fight standard and large sized Bokoblins and Lizalfos for most of the game. Fighting the same enemies over and over again started to bore me near the end of my playtime and I found it strange Nintendo left out so many different types monsters such as Like-Likes, Darknuts, Stalfos, Leevers, etc. It really doesn’t help the copy and pasted feel of many enemy encounters when the combat barely changes in hour one compared to hour 100.

I did like that they addressed the common complaint of combat difficulty. The enemies here actually put up a fight and provide for some tough encounters that require quick thinking and good reflexes. However, they also included two mechanics that trivialize the combat: Flurry Rush and parries.

Once I discovered how easy it is to abuse and activate the time slowing effects of Flurry Rush and parrying, the enemies were no longer a threat. The window to activate the Flurry Rush is so large that I often found myself triggering it when I wanted to back flip or sidestep for movement purposes. 

The combat itself felt a little stiff as well. The way Link stops moving when he swings his sword felt abrupt and his canned combos felt too automated. When you attack, Link will perform a simple combo string. In past games, the direction and type of attack could vary depending on your input. Link’s moves would actually be based on player input. I missed the choice of horizontal and vertical slashes, a sword thrust, and a crouch stab from behind a shield, among other moves.

The runes were cool, but I did not use them very often during combat. The combat sandbox in general felt a little underwhelming, mostly because Stasis, Magnesis, and Cryonis are the only unique abilities Link gets. 

The addition of infinite bombs seems like a carry over from ALBW’s item system, but don’t add much to the game. Infinite bombs are incredibly easy to abuse and are often more effective than arrows. I still think Wind Waker and the N64 games have the best combat sandboxes as they have a wide array of items and abilities without any overpowered dodges or parrying.

Because of the lack of unique items and abilities, the sense of progression is stunted. Link doesn’t gain access to new areas with the acquisition of tools that allows him to interact with the world and enemies in a different way. You get your rune abilities at the beginning and that is it. You are stuck making water platforms and moving metal objects for the rest of the game. I’ve always felt Zelda was better off closer to the Metroidvania style of design than an open world style, and BotW only reaffirms that opinion. BotW loses the moments of realization that your newly acquired abilities/items/information can be used in an earlier area to access something new, or recontextualize something you thought you had a handle on.

Link’s various armor sets also exemplify the grindy nature of this open world by  requiring you to farm items to upgrade equipment. This is probably the most standard open world aspect of the game and one that is just not worth engaging in.

I also wanted to touch on the story and characters, which is another element that I feel is important to the series (even if many disagree). Because of the open design, the story was pushed out of the players way for the most part. Unfortunately this led to a bunch of underdeveloped characters I never cared about. The hints into each Champion’s history and relationships with other characters was intriguing, but we never got anything more than simple archetypes. It would have been great to see longer story quests build up to the divine beasts.

One of the biggest story fumbles were the memories. While some were interesting they often added so little and often felt pointless. They gave us scraps of characterization for Zelda and that’s it. As for timeline stuff, the game is so vague that it doesn’t really matter (and I’m a Zelda timeline lover).

There are no memorable characters. We get interactions between the various champions and Zelda in flashbacks, but learn almost nothing about them, their personal histories, or see them grow or change in any meaningful way.

Games like Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask have you meet characters that have arcs, relationships, and goals. Players watch the characters grow and change. They inform the plot while growing along with the overall narrative. You see each character receive closure to their own storylines alongside the main narrative.

There is no plot in BotW. You wake up and are told to kill Ganon. If you defeat the Divine Beats you get to see more of Link’s lost memory, but all of that happened in the past, and you know that the four primary characters are already dead. Their fate is known before the player is even introduced to them.

There is no sense of urgency or danger. In Majora’s Mask you can see how Skull Kid’s meddling and the threat of the falling moon have negatively impacted every single one of the residents of Termina. The Deku Swamp’s water has been poisoned, the Gorons are frozen over, the sea temperature has risen and Lulu’s eggs Zora eggs have been stolen by pirates, the Ikana researcher has been turned into a zombie and the land has been cursed to keep the undead from dying completely. In Breath of the Wild, none of the people are in any danger. No one is scared of the obvious and inevitable return of Ganon. After the calamity life went on, the fall of an entire civilization didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the existing citizenry of Hyrule.

For a series that receives such massive amounts of praise, I don’t think Nintendo can keep on barely scraping by in the story and lore department. Nintendo should put more time and effort into a stronger focus on the narrative for this series. It’s a shame when the peak of storytelling in your franchise was over a decade ago (even though Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker were great).

I enjoyed my time with BotW immensely in the first 20 to 30 hours, but once I had a consistent understanding of the world and mechanics, I started to pick apart all the little things that I didn’t like, and it really hurt my enjoyment of the game.

What makes it hard for me is reading other Zelda fans’ impressions stating this is the best game in the series and that they hope Zelda never goes back to the way it was before. This series can and has done more. It has provided interesting worlds, memorable characters, unique and inventive puzzles and challenges that have stayed with me for years. When I think of BotW I just remember all of the things I didn’t like. I just think about how I can’t see myself ever returning to this game in the same way I do to almost every other game in the series.

It makes me sad because the traditional, more linear Zelda formula, despite some bad design decisions in the later games, still provides a valuable experience and is responsible for more than a handful of my favorite video games of all time.

DLC UPDATE:  I really liked the Champion’s Ballad DLC  just because of the shrine and Divine Beast. The new shrines were some of the best in the game, and the new divine beast was by far the best. The boss at the end was a unique challenge and is one of my favorite moments in BotW, it felt like an important event in a way that almost nothing else did in the base game.

[gascon-en-exil]

The Not Really Definitive Ranking of the Zelda Series: #2

#11-19 (link to #11, with further links to each of the others)

#10 - Tri Force Heroes

#9 - The Wind Waker

#8 - The Minish Cap

#7 - A Link to the Past

#6 - Link’s Awakening

#5 - Ocarina of Time

#4 - Twilight Princess

#3 - A Link Between Worlds

#2 - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Game of the Year material this may very well be, but it took me some time and reflection to come around on Breath of the Wild. After all, as anyone who’s been reading along has undoubtedly picked up on by now, I prefer my Zelda games mostly linear (especially if it provides an engaging and thought-provoking story), not too difficult, and comfortably approachable from the perspective of 100% completion. BotW is...not that. The story is certainly there, but it’s told unlike any other game in the series - parceled out into cutscenes and small character moments to be optionally collected like so much else in the vast realm of BotW Hyrule. But as for the rest? This game gives the player very little direction, limited help in keeping track of everything, and without question the steepest learning curve since the NES games. After the first few days I was ready to sigh my way through the rest of the game, consigning it at last to some middling position that left me debating whether getting killed repeatedly by Guardians or falling off cliffs in the rain or wrestling with clumsy gyroscope controls and an unforgiving physics engine (any Korok that requires moving large boulders around can go die in a fire) was more or less annoying than the various nuisances that comprise Skyward Sword. There wasn’t much I was looking forward to in finishing the game.

And yet, in spite of all that I fell for the charm of BotW in the end. Maybe it was the sheer geographic variety of the world, which asserts itself constantly through differences in wildlife, vegetation, and temperature (even if, living in the subtropics as I do, I raised an eyebrow at the Faron/Lurelin region not requiring heat resistance despite hitting some realistically uncomfortable highs). Maybe it was the story that emerged from the memory fragments, which fleshes out the worldbuilding of all its predecessors and more importantly finally manages to turn Zelda herself into an interesting and consistently-written character. Maybe it was the peculiar fun of checking off points on the game’s enormous (and almost entirely optional) to-do list, feeling genuinely satisfied at the end that I’d gone everywhere and done everything there is to do. Maybe it was Link’s supportive Zora boyfriend.

...Yes, really. I’m going there.

There really is something to be said for the elements of a game that leave a lasting impact in fandom. Sidon’s appeal has quickly surpassed that of all previous characters with a slash following in this series, and while you can debate all day about the practical problems inherent in the height difference or shark genitalia or whatever Sidlink is a pairing with some grounding in the events of the game. Plus, it doesn’t involve the prospect of either really dark hate sex (Ganondorf, Dark Link, Ghirahim) or the need to contort a character into existence (male!Sheik). Wonders never cease.

That’s just one example of the myriad diverse directions in which the fandom has reacted to BotW in the month and a half since its release. There’s a new and intriguing F/F pairing in the form of Urbosa/Zelda, Mipha’s relationship with Link has reignited yet again shipping war between Zelink and another pairing, and a number of fans have latched onto Link’s Gerudo vai costume for trans headcanons. The last of these is especially notable as an example of fandom salvaging the missteps of content creators, and by that I mean both the somewhat sketchy means by which Link obtains the outfit in the game and Nintendo’s waffling over the prospect of a female Link.

It may not be perfect, but I wager it’s a far more interesting angle than Linkle.

BotW is being praised left and right for “correcting” the linearity of the series post-Ocarina of Time, but I believe it’s equally as laudable for its greater consciousness of just how expansive and diverse the player base of the Zelda series is. Given that the developers still insist, however bizarrely, that Link is meant to be a self-insert character, it’s important that he and the world he inhabits have that kind of broad appeal. Now we have the Sheikah as a fully-developed race/tribe rather than a shadow on the edges of Hyrulian society (fitting for their in-story role, but using that as an excuse to avoid developing them is just lazy), a Gerudo society that could plausibly function as more than a harem for the antagonist, redesigned Rito that better fit into the world they inhabit (i.e. their economy is not entirely based around postal service), and a number of Hylian villages and settlements that showcase the breadth of their culture, even in the absence of Hyrule proper.

I find that that’s another great facet of the discovery element of BotW: Link’s gradual realization that the empty ruins he first awakens to do not indicate the fate of the world at large. Life continues in spite of the shadow of Calamity Ganon looming over Hyrule Castle, and that’s as important a motivating factor for Link (and the player) in his quest as the memories he regains of Zelda and the fallen Champions. The Great Plateau is both a microcosm of the world of BotW that doubles as a player-guided tutorial and a poor reflection of all that Hyrule truly has to offer (though it does double as a throwback to the mostly empty world of the original Legend of Zelda, so there’s that). It succeeds wonderfully in making the player want to explore the world beneath the plateau.

Not everything Link comes across in his travels necessarily feels worth the trip, of course. I won’t rehash the numerous complaints online about overused shrine concepts (but to be fair I believe only about twenty of the total 120 are of the repetitive combat variety), out-of-the-way Korok seeds, and locations that are generally a pain to reach for one reason or another, but I do acknowledge them all as valid. As for the dungeons, their brevity and identical aesthetics are somewhat disappointing - the bosses in particular feel uninspired, even if they are each thematically appropriate - but many of the puzzles in them are engaging and their designs clever. Divine Beast Vah Ruta specifically rose above my expectations. Connoisseur of water dungeons that I am, I was perplexed when I first read that BotW’s would be a giant elephant. In what world does an elephant make sense as the guardian of the fish-like Zoras? All the same, the dungeon works wonderfully, from the thrilling and homoerotic fight to get inside to the use of water from the elephant’s trunk to manipulate the mechanisms of the interior. The rest of the Divine Beasts weren’t lacking - I didn’t even think Vah Medoh was as much of a dud as others seem to, even if most of that may be because of Revali’s snark - but Ruta is unquestionably the standout as far as I’m concerned.

I even grew to accept the game’s demanding difficulty, because it feels so rewarding in the end to become well-equipped and skilled enough to take down the Guardians and Lynels that menaced you early in the game. Upgrading equipment feels consistently rewarding rather than a completionist chore for the most part (though I don’t have any of the armor-granting amiibos, so that may also be a factor). As for the weapons and shields, I will never understand why the durability system is so controversial. BotW throws far more weapons at you than you can ever possibly carry, even when fully upgraded, and because even the high-end weapons are not that hard to obtain if you have an idea of where to look I rarely feel like I’m losing something when one breaks. The only time I found durability annoying was when it came to mining weapons like the sledgehammer, since they serve a common utilitarian purpose that will cause them to break eventually (unlike other utility items like torches and Korok leaves). But hey, at least there’s always infinite bombs.

You can nitpick this game all over the place - most of the voice acting is mediocre, Ganon is more of a malevolent force of nature than a character, the Rito quest is underdeveloped, the final fight is a joke, Bolson is...something - but at the end of the day those feel like petty complaints for what is an otherwise an expertly-crafted game. BotW isn’t even finished yet, as there’s a hard mode (I’ll pass), an enemy gauntlet area, and a new story and dungeon promised in DLC coming later this year. I still don’t think any of that will wow me enough to bump this game in the top place, but all in all second place in a series like Zelda is a pretty great place to be.

Next time: You know what’s coming.

[myongfisher]

Navigating branding for tech startups—a founder’s journey

A couple of weeks ago the 99designs team invited me to write a post for the blog and share my branding story, and as a startup founder I will never ever pass up an opportunity to talk about my company.

So here’s the story of Hecate, a suite of GitHub apps to help software engineering managers do their job better. There are two reasons you might find this story interesting.

The first is that I was the VP of engineering for 99designs itself. It’s always interesting to hear how a former employee uses their old product. Knowing the ins and outs of 99designs helped me get a great result and hopefully you can pick up a pro-tip or two.

The second is around how I’ve tried to use branding to drive company culture, particularly around diversity and inclusion, from day zero.

Via Hecate.

Taking the first step —

Like all good startups, Hecate began as a side project based on my own experiences running the dev team at 99designs. I began tinkering to find a simple way to let engineering managers know what their team is working on, a seemingly simple task that gets harder and harder as a team grows.

Beyond understanding the problem of communication in product teams, years of working for 99designs and seeing all of our customer’s success gave me a strong appreciation for branding work and I couldn’t get myself motivated without one.

Examining my branding influences —

I was binge-watching the TV show American Gods around the time I got started on the initial idea. The TV series is based on a book by Neil Gaiman, and it draws heavily on Norse mythology. I found that inspiring and wanted to follow suit. In Norse mythology Huginn and Muninn are a pair of ravens who fly all over the world, and bring information back to Odin. The imagery fit my business idea perfectly, but unfortunately someone else had the same inspiration.

I needed to keep going though, so rather than abandon the idea, I decided that the working title would be GitRaven. I bodged up a placeholder logo using a logo maker and then switched my focus back to prototyping the first version of the product.

A placeholder logo for what later should become Hecate

After my initial nudge towards all things Norse, some nagging thoughts pulled me back—more than just the embarrassingly low quality of the logo and genericness of the name.

Working at 99designs meant that I was surrounded by branding for tech companies. I had already identified three typical ways that startups went with their branding: run-of-the-mill bootstrap theme, mid-century Scandinavian vibe, and dark background deep-nerd culture.

What I was seeing was a distinct lack of diversity in the way that tech startups were branding and presenting themselves. I’m a big fan of Amy Wibowo, computer scientist and founder of Bubble Sort Zines and her writing on diversity in tech and in the way products are presented has been hugely influential for me. I discovered her through her computer science zines, but Coding Like a Girl is a great place to start with her work.

When the organisation Code Like a Girl published a thinkpiece calling for an end to ‘pinkifying’ tech, that is designing platforms and tools in a way that they might be more appealing for a female-identifying audience, there was an accompanying Twitterstorm, and hurt feelings all round.

For me, it was disappointing. This debate made me determined to be better. My company was my chance to create diversity in way that I believed in and I wanted this built into the brand. I decided to pay homage to Amy’s work, and worked to completely flip my branding instincts. I switched my naming search from gods to goddesses and worked my way through the Greek pantheon. Hecate emerged, the Greek goddess of crossroads and witchcraft.

Creating Hecate —

With the name in place, it was time to consider a visual identity. I decided I was going to do a logo design contest with Hecate.

Learn more about working with designers on 99designs.

With a brief taking shape, I pulled ideas together on Pinterest. I tried to keep a pretty open mind while I was pinning things I liked, but by the time I had the board together, it was pretty obvious I was leaning towards developing a character or mascot for Hecate.

So I came up with a brief: I need a vector character/mascot design that can do double duty as a logo with a complementary colour scheme. It should be either a girl or a cat in a witches hat in a kind of bright pastel colour scheme.

99designs instagram post featuring the work of top level designer NataMarmelada

However, this brief never saw the light of day because I saw this Instagram post from 99designs. It was almost bang on.

When I contacted the designer—NataMarmelada—I discovered that the character design was an ‘off cut’ from a 99designs contest and that she was open to selling it.

Making Hecate more witchy. In progress character design by NataMarmelada.

I wanted Hecate to be a little more ‘witchy’, so she got a little update, and a hat. I’d asked for the hat and coat to sit halfway between a traditional witches outfit and kind of a classic lighthouse-keeper raincoat and hat for a little bit of nautical feel.

The final version is exactly what I’d hoped for, she’s the perfect representative for my tech brand.

Playing against type —

While the majority of my budget for branding had gone on mascot development, it was worth it. Unfortunately there’s quite a bit more to branding than just a mascot and with the budget gone I had to switch to a “beg, borrow, and steal” mentality to get the rest done. The book Design for Hackers was a great resource to help finish the job.

I took the colour scheme from the mascot design and plugged it into the various colour pickers recommended in the book like the Adobe Colour Wheel (formerly known as Kuler) until I had a pallette I could work with.

The Hecate wordmark in combination with the character design by NataMarmelada

I was also missing a wordmark to go with the mascot. Thankfully I had a friend who is a massive typography nerd who owed me a favour. He gave me a bunch of type foundry recommendations which I browsed through until I found Chapeau from Milieu Grotesque which was the perfect blend of professional and friendly. To finalise the wordmark I just needed to tweak the crossbar on the H a little to line up with the e.

Branding for tech startups: top tips —

Reflecting on the whole process of developing my branding there are a few takeaways I can share:

Pro-tip number one is to follow the 99designs instagram. The designer marketing team is always trying to show off some of the best work on the platform and it’s a great way to find talent on the up and up.

Contests are still probably the best way to get a logo done, but if you’ve found someone with an aesthetic you’re really compatible with you can save a lot of time and a little bit of money working directly with the designer

It’s worth putting in the extra thought up front on your brand. If I hadn’t questioned my own default assumptions on branding I’d have ended up with something that wouldn’t stand out in the market.

If you’re a founder, definitely keep these things in mind when you’re developing the branding for your tech startup.

Hecate is open for business already. If you’re an engineering or product manager with a tech team in the range of ten to thirty engineers come and check us out at https://hecate.co/

Need high-quality branding for your tech startup?

Look no further: our designers have what it takes.

Learn more

The post Navigating branding for tech startups—a founder’s journey appeared first on 99designs.

Navigating branding for tech startups—a founder’s journey published first on https://www.lilpackaging.com/

[pamelahetrick]

Navigating branding for tech startupsa founders journey

A couple of weeks ago the 99designs team invited me to write a post for the blog and share my branding story, and as a startup founder I will never ever pass up an opportunity to talk about my company.

So here’s the story of Hecate, a suite of GitHub apps to help software engineering managers do their job better. There are two reasons you might find this story interesting.

The first is that I was the VP of engineering for 99designs itself. It’s always interesting to hear how a former employee uses their old product. Knowing the ins and outs of 99designs helped me get a great result and hopefully you can pick up a pro-tip or two.

The second is around how I’ve tried to use branding to drive company culture, particularly around diversity and inclusion, from day zero.

Via Hecate.

Taking the first step —

Like all good startups, Hecate began as a side project based on my own experiences running the dev team at 99designs. I began tinkering to find a simple way to let engineering managers know what their team is working on, a seemingly simple task that gets harder and harder as a team grows.

Beyond understanding the problem of communication in product teams, years of working for 99designs and seeing all of our customer’s success gave me a strong appreciation for branding work and I couldn’t get myself motivated without one.

Examining my branding influences —

I was binge-watching the TV show American Gods around the time I got started on the initial idea. The TV series is based on a book by Neil Gaiman, and it draws heavily on Norse mythology. I found that inspiring and wanted to follow suit. In Norse mythology Huginn and Muninn are a pair of ravens who fly all over the world, and bring information back to Odin. The imagery fit my business idea perfectly, but unfortunately someone else had the same inspiration.

I needed to keep going though, so rather than abandon the idea, I decided that the working title would be GitRaven. I bodged up a placeholder logo using a logo maker and then switched my focus back to prototyping the first version of the product.

A placeholder logo for what later should become Hecate

After my initial nudge towards all things Norse, some nagging thoughts pulled me back—more than just the embarrassingly low quality of the logo and genericness of the name.

Working at 99designs meant that I was surrounded by branding for tech companies. I had already identified three typical ways that startups went with their branding: run-of-the-mill bootstrap theme, mid-century Scandinavian vibe, and dark background deep-nerd culture.

What I was seeing was a distinct lack of diversity in the way that tech startups were branding and presenting themselves. I’m a big fan of Amy Wibowo, computer scientist and founder of Bubble Sort Zines and her writing on diversity in tech and in the way products are presented has been hugely influential for me. I discovered her through her computer science zines, but Coding Like a Girl is a great place to start with her work.

When the organisation Code Like a Girl published a thinkpiece calling for an end to ‘pinkifying’ tech, that is designing platforms and tools in a way that they might be more appealing for a female-identifying audience, there was an accompanying Twitterstorm, and hurt feelings all round.

For me, it was disappointing. This debate made me determined to be better. My company was my chance to create diversity in way that I believed in and I wanted this built into the brand. I decided to pay homage to Amy’s work, and worked to completely flip my branding instincts. I switched my naming search from gods to goddesses and worked my way through the Greek pantheon. Hecate emerged, the Greek goddess of crossroads and witchcraft.

Creating Hecate —

With the name in place, it was time to consider a visual identity. I decided I was going to do a logo design contest with Hecate.

Learn more about working with designers on 99designs.

With a brief taking shape, I pulled ideas together on Pinterest. I tried to keep a pretty open mind while I was pinning things I liked, but by the time I had the board together, it was pretty obvious I was leaning towards developing a character or mascot for Hecate.

So I came up with a brief: I need a vector character/mascot design that can do double duty as a logo with a complementary colour scheme. It should be either a girl or a cat in a witches hat in a kind of bright pastel colour scheme.

99designs instagram post featuring the work of top level designer NataMarmelada

However, this brief never saw the light of day because I saw this Instagram post from 99designs. It was almost bang on.

When I contacted the designer—NataMarmelada—I discovered that the character design was an ‘off cut’ from a 99designs contest and that she was open to selling it.

Making Hecate more witchy. In progress character design by NataMarmelada.

I wanted Hecate to be a little more ‘witchy’, so she got a little update, and a hat. I’d asked for the hat and coat to sit halfway between a traditional witches outfit and kind of a classic lighthouse-keeper raincoat and hat for a little bit of nautical feel.

The final version is exactly what I’d hoped for, she’s the perfect representative for my tech brand.

Playing against type —

While the majority of my budget for branding had gone on mascot development, it was worth it. Unfortunately there’s quite a bit more to branding than just a mascot and with the budget gone I had to switch to a “beg, borrow, and steal” mentality to get the rest done. The book Design for Hackers was a great resource to help finish the job.

I took the colour scheme from the mascot design and plugged it into the various colour pickers recommended in the book like the Adobe Colour Wheel (formerly known as Kuler) until I had a pallette I could work with.

The Hecate wordmark in combination with the character design by NataMarmelada

I was also missing a wordmark to go with the mascot. Thankfully I had a friend who is a massive typography nerd who owed me a favour. He gave me a bunch of type foundry recommendations which I browsed through until I found Chapeau from Milieu Grotesque which was the perfect blend of professional and friendly. To finalise the wordmark I just needed to tweak the crossbar on the H a little to line up with the e.

Branding for tech startups: top tips —

Reflecting on the whole process of developing my branding there are a few takeaways I can share:

Pro-tip number one is to follow the 99designs instagram. The designer marketing team is always trying to show off some of the best work on the platform and it’s a great way to find talent on the up and up.

Contests are still probably the best way to get a logo done, but if you’ve found someone with an aesthetic you’re really compatible with you can save a lot of time and a little bit of money working directly with the designer

It’s worth putting in the extra thought up front on your brand. If I hadn’t questioned my own default assumptions on branding I’d have ended up with something that wouldn’t stand out in the market.

If you’re a founder, definitely keep these things in mind when you’re developing the branding for your tech startup.

Hecate is open for business already. If you’re an engineering or product manager with a tech team in the range of ten to thirty engineers come and check us out at https://hecate.co/

Need high-quality branding for your tech startup?

Look no further: our designers have what it takes.

Learn more

The post Navigating branding for tech startups—a founder’s journey appeared first on 99designs.

via 99designs https://99designs.co.uk/blog/logo-branding-en-gb/branding-for-tech-startups/

[susaanrogers]

Navigating branding for tech startups—a founder’s journey

A couple of weeks ago the 99designs team invited me to write a post for the blog and share my branding story, and as a startup founder I will never ever pass up an opportunity to talk about my company.

So here’s the story of Hecate, a suite of GitHub apps to help software engineering managers do their job better. There are two reasons you might find this story interesting.

The first is that I was the VP of engineering for 99designs itself. It’s always interesting to hear how a former employee uses their old product. Knowing the ins and outs of 99designs helped me get a great result and hopefully you can pick up a pro-tip or two.

The second is around how I’ve tried to use branding to drive company culture, particularly around diversity and inclusion, from day zero.

Via Hecate.

Taking the first step —

Like all good startups, Hecate began as a side project based on my own experiences running the dev team at 99designs. I began tinkering to find a simple way to let engineering managers know what their team is working on, a seemingly simple task that gets harder and harder as a team grows.

Beyond understanding the problem of communication in product teams, years of working for 99designs and seeing all of our customer’s success gave me a strong appreciation for branding work and I couldn’t get myself motivated without one.

Examining my branding influences —

I was binge-watching the TV show American Gods around the time I got started on the initial idea. The TV series is based on a book by Neil Gaiman, and it draws heavily on Norse mythology. I found that inspiring and wanted to follow suit. In Norse mythology Huginn and Muninn are a pair of ravens who fly all over the world, and bring information back to Odin. The imagery fit my business idea perfectly, but unfortunately someone else had the same inspiration.

I needed to keep going though, so rather than abandon the idea, I decided that the working title would be GitRaven. I bodged up a placeholder logo using a logo maker and then switched my focus back to prototyping the first version of the product.

A placeholder logo for what later should become Hecate

After my initial nudge towards all things Norse, some nagging thoughts pulled me back—more than just the embarrassingly low quality of the logo and genericness of the name.

Working at 99designs meant that I was surrounded by branding for tech companies. I had already identified three typical ways that startups went with their branding: run-of-the-mill bootstrap theme, mid-century Scandinavian vibe, and dark background deep-nerd culture.

What I was seeing was a distinct lack of diversity in the way that tech startups were branding and presenting themselves. I’m a big fan of Amy Wibowo, computer scientist and founder of Bubble Sort Zines and her writing on diversity in tech and in the way products are presented has been hugely influential for me. I discovered her through her computer science zines, but Coding Like a Girl is a great place to start with her work.

When the organisation Code Like a Girl published a thinkpiece calling for an end to ‘pinkifying’ tech, that is designing platforms and tools in a way that they might be more appealing for a female-identifying audience, there was an accompanying Twitterstorm, and hurt feelings all round.

For me, it was disappointing. This debate made me determined to be better. My company was my chance to create diversity in way that I believed in and I wanted this built into the brand. I decided to pay homage to Amy’s work, and worked to completely flip my branding instincts. I switched my naming search from gods to goddesses and worked my way through the Greek pantheon. Hecate emerged, the Greek goddess of crossroads and witchcraft.

Creating Hecate —

With the name in place, it was time to consider a visual identity. I decided I was going to do a logo design contest with Hecate.

Learn more about working with designers on 99designs.

With a brief taking shape, I pulled ideas together on Pinterest. I tried to keep a pretty open mind while I was pinning things I liked, but by the time I had the board together, it was pretty obvious I was leaning towards developing a character or mascot for Hecate.

So I came up with a brief: I need a vector character/mascot design that can do double duty as a logo with a complementary colour scheme. It should be either a girl or a cat in a witches hat in a kind of bright pastel colour scheme.

99designs instagram post featuring the work of top level designer NataMarmelada

However, this brief never saw the light of day because I saw this Instagram post from 99designs. It was almost bang on.

When I contacted the designer—NataMarmelada—I discovered that the character design was an ‘off cut’ from a 99designs contest and that she was open to selling it.

Making Hecate more witchy. In progress character design by NataMarmelada.

I wanted Hecate to be a little more ‘witchy’, so she got a little update, and a hat. I’d asked for the hat and coat to sit halfway between a traditional witches outfit and kind of a classic lighthouse-keeper raincoat and hat for a little bit of nautical feel.

The final version is exactly what I’d hoped for, she’s the perfect representative for my tech brand.

Playing against type —

While the majority of my budget for branding had gone on mascot development, it was worth it. Unfortunately there’s quite a bit more to branding than just a mascot and with the budget gone I had to switch to a “beg, borrow, and steal” mentality to get the rest done. The book Design for Hackers was a great resource to help finish the job.

I took the colour scheme from the mascot design and plugged it into the various colour pickers recommended in the book like the Adobe Colour Wheel (formerly known as Kuler) until I had a pallette I could work with.

The Hecate wordmark in combination with the character design by NataMarmelada

I was also missing a wordmark to go with the mascot. Thankfully I had a friend who is a massive typography nerd who owed me a favour. He gave me a bunch of type foundry recommendations which I browsed through until I found Chapeau from Milieu Grotesque which was the perfect blend of professional and friendly. To finalise the wordmark I just needed to tweak the crossbar on the H a little to line up with the e.

Branding for tech startups: top tips —

Reflecting on the whole process of developing my branding there are a few takeaways I can share:

Pro-tip number one is to follow the 99designs instagram. The designer marketing team is always trying to show off some of the best work on the platform and it’s a great way to find talent on the up and up.

Contests are still probably the best way to get a logo done, but if you’ve found someone with an aesthetic you’re really compatible with you can save a lot of time and a little bit of money working directly with the designer

It’s worth putting in the extra thought up front on your brand. If I hadn’t questioned my own default assumptions on branding I’d have ended up with something that wouldn’t stand out in the market.

If you’re a founder, definitely keep these things in mind when you’re developing the branding for your tech startup.

Hecate is open for business already. If you’re an engineering or product manager with a tech team in the range of ten to thirty engineers come and check us out at https://hecate.co/

Need high-quality branding for your tech startup?

Look no further: our designers have what it takes.

Learn more

The post Navigating branding for tech startups—a founder’s journey appeared first on 99designs.

[studentsofshield]

2015 Comics Holiday Gift Guide Part 2 - All the Rest

By Vincent Faust

(This was originally published on December 14, 2015)

Everyone loves Marvel and DC’s movies and television shows. But maybe you’re looking for something different. Not simply some source material (all the sources are better though, just like novel to film adaptations), but something wholly original that you can’t get anywhere else. 

Comics are a singular medium with its own advantages and disadvantages in conveying art and telling a story, just like prose, music, film, video games, etc. If you ask a creator or fan of comics, the motto is that this is the medium with an infinite budget. On a surface level, the only constraints are an artist’s illustration abilities. The special effects are free. Superheroes can fight aliens in space. Dragons can romp around a battlefield of thousands of soldiers. There are no bounds, only as far as imagination can push us. 

Here are some more colorful suggestions to show off how comic books work, the heights they can reach, imaginative independent books and some low key Marvel gems.

10. Understanding Comics

You love the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Nolan’s Batman films. You would love to get into comic books. The only problem is you don’t fully understand how to read these weird picture books. What do you do with double-stacked left side panels? Are Bendis’ dozen speech bubbles confusing you? Are you always hung up on figuring out the progression of time in comics storytelling? I don’t fault you. Comics can be incredibly intimidating, even putting aside the “volume 6 issue 21” and crossover/tie-in messes that plague superhero books. 

You need to pick up Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Think of the most fun and informative textbook you’ve ever used in school. Then add character to it and make it about a topic you give a shit about. That is Understanding Comics. McCloud’s book is the go to for both industry newcomers and veteran academics. It belongs on everyone’s shelf. 

McCloud wrote two sequels, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics. They’re just as informative and interesting as the original. However, they are less of a 101 and delve into the specific advances of their respective times. Reinventing attempts to cover digital comics, but from the perspective of 2000 when it was written. Some of it doesn’t hold up as well.

11. All-Star Superman

Do you think Superman is boring? He’s an alien that we can’t even relate to. He has dozens of powers that would be sufficient by themselves on any other superhero. He wears underwear over his tights. His secret identity concealing glasses are dumb. He reversed time by flying around the planet. He’s in a shitty Zach Snyder movie. Not even Bryan Singer could make him work. He belongs in the past where he comes from. He isn’t cool like Batman and Spider-Man. Right?

Well, guess what? You are objectively wrong. Superman is the forefather to all modern superheroes. He was the big leap (literally) that fused Greek mythic heroes and early 1900s pulp heroes. Hercules and Odysseus meets The Shadow and The Phantom. And he isn’t an archaic idea that should have been left in the 1940s. 

One of the greatest comic writers of all time, Grant Morrison, said this about the big blue boy scout, 

“Because it all derived from Superman. I mean, I love all the characters, but Superman is just this perfect human pop-culture distillation of a really basic idea. He’s a good guy. He loves us. He will not stop in defending us. How beautiful is that? He’s like a sci-fi Jesus. He’ll never let you down. And only in fiction can that guy actually exist, because real guys will always let you down one way or another. We actually made up an idea that beautiful. That’s just cool to me. We made a little paper universe where all of the above is true.” 

Supes is about our idealism, everything we can and should be. He’s an alien stronger than all of us, but he chooses to serve us and desperately wants to be one of us. 

Morrison wrote a twelve issue deconstruction of The Man of Steel called All-Star Superman. Each issue covers another part of his character, whether it’s his love life or his villains. It is a nearly immaculate piece of comic book storytelling. Morrison’s meta writing is complimented perfectly by Frank Quitely’s pencils. If you read this book and still think Superman is dumb, fine. 

The sad thing is that for whatever reason, DC has struggled with putting out solid Superman stories in his ongoing titles for the past fifteen or twenty years. I attribute it to them not understanding the essence of their own character. They’re constantly trying to make him edgy or tear him down. He is currently missing his powers in one book. Why?

12. Multiversity

Whaaaaaaaat? 

All-Star Superman is actually one of Grant Morrison’s more approachable works. He is more known for metafictional stories that make your mind hurt. He does a lot of drugs. Allegedly he was abducted by aliens. Or contacted by a spiritual force. I don’t really know and neither does he. His art is usually better for it though. 

In 1990, he had Animal Man acknowledge the readers and freak out. The readers freaked the hell out too. I almost wish I had not said that and spoiled the moment. But I kind of don’t care. It’s also a “I am your father” kind of moment that everyone in comics knows about whether they’ve read it. 

His most recent big metafictional piece is called The Multiversity. Here’s the concept: each issue is an individual done-in-one story presenting a different alternate dimension, all drawn by different artists. The issues are book ended by The Multiversity #1 and 2, connecting the story. At some point in one issue, a character will be reading a comic book that showcases the adventures of the previous issue. 

The Just is about a generation of spoiled superhero grandchildren obsessed with fame. Pax Americana is Morrison’s take on Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which is to say a deconstruction of the Charlton Comics characters DC bought in the 80s. Mastermen is an alternate history Earth where Superman (now called Overman) lands in Nazi Germany and is raised by Hitler. Ultra Comics is the most meta of them all, covering a fictional superhero created by “memesmiths” to defeat a “Hostile Independent Thought-Form.” Yes. It is that weird. It all works though. And by the end, an inter-dimensional team of heroes defends the entire multiverse.

13. Batman: Noel

Not much to say here. Batman: Noel is fitting for the season. Something with a theme to actually fit the Christmas spirit for those who are Christian or enjoy the celebration and aesthetic regardless. 

Lee Bermejo writes and draws this story loosely based on Charles Dickens’ evergreen novel A Christmas Carol. Catwoman, Superman, and the Joker all play the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future respectively. Bermejo’s art is really pretty. He’s otherwise known for original graphic novels on the Joker and Lex Luthor. Both worth looking into if you like Noel.

14. Saga

Brian K. Vaughan already got a spot earlier in the list for Doctor Strange: The Oath. Here is his mega hit Saga, mentioned in that entry as well. Saga just hit a magic vein in the industry that catapulted it to stardom. All the pieces are fabulous. 

Brian K. Vaughan is a gifted writer that can flesh out worlds as seen in Y, Ex Machina and Lost. Fiona Staples came from relative obscurity and turned into a top three artist overnight on the book (and she colors it too!). 

It’s ultimately a love story. Alana and Marko are from opposing races that have been at war forever. To complicate things further, they have a baby they have to take care of. Part of its appeal is the crazy shit they get into. A race of aliens have televisions for heads. There is an infamous splash page of a dragon fellating itself. 

You can get the first trade here. There is an oversized hardcover that collects the first 18 issues (three trades). It’s worth it for Fiona’s beautiful art alone. However, you are going to want to keep reading the series as soon as you finish it and the second hardcover probably won’t drop for a while. So here are volumes 2, 3, 4, and 5.

15. Ms. Marvel

Media representation and diversity have increasingly become a focus in media studies and the discussion has become an increasingly mainstream topic every day. Comic books have unfortunately been pretty lackluster on these fronts for decades. 

In the 1930s through mid 1950s, there was some diversity in comics. Girls read Supergirl as much as boys read Superman. Romance comics were popular with women, while Archie, Betty and Veronica were a co-ed teenage sensation. There were some problems from the start, like most things in the naive post-war era. A lot of the different genres, books, etc were explicitly gendered. The audience was there though. 

Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent and the subsequent hysteria not only drastically shrunk the market. It also censored entire genres and pushed entire demographics out of the medium. For comparison, Japanese comics never experienced this censorship rallying cry and people of all genders, ages, etc read a wide array of manga. 

The lack of a significant female audience and the infatilization of the medium (no drugs, no sex, no suicide, no race issues, no vampires, etc) led to a “young male” stigma in the medium. Comics were “for boys.” The late 1980s and 1990s was probably the worst point of this, when artists ruled the industry and just wanted to draw scantily clad women. 

The late 2000s/early 2010s second (or third? 1. Cerebus, Usagi 2. 90s Image) explosion of independent comics has led to a diversification on both sides of the dollar. Marvel and DC have been trying to catch up in the past few years. Marvel particularly has made major strides with characters like Miles Morales. Sam Wilson, Jessica Drew and Carol Danvers have also exploded in popularity and exposure. 

The breakout new character of this trend by far is Kamala Khan. When Carol Danvers gave up her Ms. Marvel moniker to become Captain Marvel, the Muslim, Pakistani-American, Jersey City fangirl Kamala took up her idol’s old title after being exposed to the terrigen mists. 

Her writer, G. Willow Wilson, is a Muslim herself who has been praised for her believable teenage dialogue. Kamala’s signature artist, Adrian Alphona, made his name doing BKV’s teenage superhero book Runaways. Marvel and DC have introduced fairly few long term successful characters in the past decade or two. New superheroes cropped up every week in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Kamala may be the biggest recent breakout for Marvel. 

You can read her series across, four, trade, paperbacks. There are also two oversized hardcovers collecting the same material. Her series has continued post-Secret Wars and hopefully will for a long time.

16. Noir Comics

Ed Brubaker wrote Captain America for years (as detailed in this list). He also did other work for Marvel and DC on Iron Fist, Batman, etc. All of those stories are great and I’m sure he enjoyed doing them. 

However, Brubaker’s true calling is independent noir comics. Hollywood doesn’t make many noir movies anymore. There are some neo-noir films that capture similar tones and aesthetics – a personal favorite of mine being Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. However, if you want sultry broads, men in suits and that dark, expressionist look, you’ll need to turn to comic books for your fix. That’s not a bad thing though because Brubaker and a small circle of artist buddies have pumped out a healthy library of noir comics.

I’m going to highlight Velvet because it reunites Brubaker with Steve Epting, the primary artist from his early Cap work. Velvet is a simple secretary on the surface. But she’s secretly the most dangerous woman alive. Isn’t that a juicy premise? 

There are two volumes of Velvet out. Brubaker’s usual collaborator on these books is Sean Phillips. The pair have produced straight classics together. The Fade Out is a highlight of their oeuvre. It covers the seedy side of Golden Age Hollywood.

17. Hawkguy

Hawkeye is a character with a deep history in the Marvel Universe. He started off as a villain of Iron Man’s under the influence of Black Widow. He later joined the Avengers as part of the famous “Quirky Quartet” when Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man and Wasp ditched the team, leaving Cap with the responsibility of drafting a squad from scratch. 

Clint Barton for many years was seen (and saw himself) as a B-rate Captain America, always under his shadow. In the 1980s, Barton split off and led the West Coast Avengers brand extension. Around this time he interrupted his serial bachelor streak and got married to Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird. This pairing is basically a parody/homage of Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance (aka Green Arrow and Black Canary). Hawkeye led the Thunderbolts in the late 1990s for a while. 

In the revolutionary Avengers Disassembled storyline, Scarlet Witch goes cuckoo and in the process Hawkeye sacrifices his life to save others. He comes back to life, but audiences aren’t aware of this for a while. He flips back and forth between the aliases of Echo and Ronin. Oh, and while he was dead a teenage hero named Kate Bishop takes on the Hawkeye mantle as a Young Avenger. 

In 2012, Matt Fraction and David Aja start a Hawkeye solo title. But, it’s not a solo book. The story tracks the street level adventures of Clint and Kate as the Hawkeyes. Mostly due to Aja’s simplistic art, their tenure is already a classic and the best thing to come out of Marvel in years. Issue 11, Pizza is My Business, is one of the greatest single issues of all time. It is entirely silent and told through the perspective of Lucky, Clint and Kate’s dog. 

For whatever reason, Marvel is offering a bunch of different formats to read the book in. You can get four trade paperbacks, two hardcovers or one omnibus.

18. Bitch Planet

With Ms. Marvel, I talked about media representation. Kamala tackles these problems by simply existing. Young Muslim girls, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the typical cookie cut out of “comic fan,” can see people that look like them in comics and feel more welcome in the community. There are scientific studies that show that representation affects ones self-esteem and other factors. 

However, some of the best media directly critiques and tears down these kinds of problems. In comic books, an example of this is Kelly Sue Deconnick’s Bitch Planet. 

Deconnick is the writer responsible for evolving Carol Danvers from Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel. Carol’s getting a MCU film with her new moniker, so something worked there. Her stint on Captain Marvel gave rise to the Carol Corps, what Deconnick and Danvers’ new fans call themselves.  

Part of Deconnick’s success is her extensive self promotion and audience interaction on Tumblr. By the way, she’s married to Matt Fraction. Just like her husband, KSD has left Marvel behind to work on more personal endeavors (and ones she gets to actually make quality money from).  

Her other series, Pretty Deadly, has also been well received. It’s Bitch Planet though which has people getting tattoos inspired by it. It’s set in a dystopian future where misogyny is rampant and ingrained in the laws. “Noncompliant” women get sent to a giant prison in space. Deconnick uses this send-up of 1970s women in prison exploitation films to examine and critique issues of gender, sexuality, race, body image, etc.

19. Silver Surfer

#BasedMikeAllred. 

Mike Allred is known for his 1960s pop art style comic art. Here he is doing his thing on Silver Surfer, a character that complements the style well. He gets to draw Galactus’ funky helmet, aliens and weird intergalactic tidbits. 

Dan Slott, the longtime writer of Amazing Spider-Man, handles the writing and essentially does his spin on the Doctor Who formula. Norin Radd serves as the good Doctor, while he gets Dawn Greenwood as his companion. They explore space together. 

It’s a great little series. There are fifteen issues and three trades. You can fine them here, here and here. This series is also continuing with the same team in the new Marvel relaunch.

20. Fun Home

Most everything on this list was superheroes or “genre” fiction. What if I want something based in reality? Something autobiographical? Something that will make me feel empty inside? 

Then you are looking for Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Independent comics have a long history with personal stories. “Autobio” books exploded in the late 1980s in the first boom of indie comics interest. Names like Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar stand out from this era. Hell, Paul Giamatti played Pekar in the Oscar nominated American Splendor biopic. There’s something about someone letting you into their life that is so captivating. Especially if their life fucking sucks. These are often told in black and white, with deceivingly simple cartooning. Art Spiegelman, Eddie Campbell, Phoebe Gloeckner, David B, Marjane Satrapi, Jeffrey Brown, Craig Thompson and others have all made their livings telling their peculiar personal tales. 

Alison Bechdel started her career doing a strip called Dykes to Watch Out For. It was a mix of soap drama and topical commentary featuring a bunch of lesbians (as the name implies). Bechdel’s strip has been overshadowed by the “Bechdel test” A proposed test to test gender biases in media, particularly film. The test asks whether a work has at least two women who talk about something together other than a man. Theoretically, whether a film passes or fails has a judgment on whether it is in a way sexist. Unfortunately, the test has been broadly applied to label works as sexist or even make value/quality judgments. 

Bechdel has transitioned from strip cartooning to an author of autobio graphic novels. Fun Home parallels her coming of age and coming out story with her father’s homosexuality, pedophilia and suicide. It sounds tragic and twisted. It is. And it is one of the best graphic novels of all time. It has also been adapted as a Broadway musical, which is currently running. 

Bechdel has put out a sequel of sorts, Are You My Mother?, which covers her mother instead of her father. It’s still her work and spectacular, but doesn’t stand up to Fun Home.

I highly recommend www.instocktrades.com. They will offer almost all of these books cheaper than Amazon or brick and mortar stores will. Some of them might not be in stock on Amazon, or more obscure and harder to find in stores, and IST will also be more likely to have them available. Over fifty bucks, free shipping.

10. Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics,  Making Comics 11. All-Star Superman 12. Multiversity 13. Batman: Noel 14. Saga – Vol 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 / HC Vol 1 15. Ms. Marvel – Vol 1, 2, 3, 4 / HC Vol 1, 2 16. Noir Comics – Velvet Vol 1, 2, The Fade Out Vol 1, 2, 3 17. Hawkeye Vol 1, 2, 3, 4 / HC Vol 1, 2 / Omnibus 18. Bitch Planet, Pretty Deadly 19. Silver Surfer – Vol 1, 2, 3 20. Fun Home, Are You My Mother?